NH Gas Tax Fighters MN Cafe Showing the Way: Real Transparency - Granite Grok

NH Gas Tax Fighters MN Cafe Showing the Way: Real Transparency

Check this out:

receipt_gas_tx
The image above is of two receipts.  The one on the left is a receipt from a Oasis Cafe in Minnesota.  Never mind the embarrassing comment on our educated society with the machine doing the simple arithmetic for the rube that ordered the burger, note the “*MIN WAGE FEE”.

Now look at the receipt on the right. That’s my receipt from a fill up a few days ago.  Note the tax line, encircled in red, reads “$0.00”.  Now, sure, there is no sales tax in NH.  But I am paying taxes there.  That should not be hidden.

If the state forcefully takes money from the citizen, the state should report what it has taken at the point it occurs, should make it transparent, not just through press inquiry, but right in the face of the people. Explicitly. The state should make it, undeniably, known to all what it has taken with a simple clear label as to why–which just a tenet to the Rule of Law anyway.  Note to conservatives in the State house and Senate.  This is something to fight for!

There are lessons here.  

It’s much easier for the insouciant to proffer an opinion on the abstract.  But when the abstract crystallizes into reality, a proximal reality, reality that bites, the insouciant become less so.

Take illegal immigration for example.  A few months back if you’d ask many about what to do about illegal immigration, they would respond, “What you gonna do, ship them out. You can’t do that…RACIST!”   They said that because it was an easy argument and they had no stake–or at least believed that to be the case.  Fast forward a month when hundreds of real illegal immigrant children crashed into schools and towns across the country.  Suddenly, many of the same people took notice and sounded off.  Of course they’re acting out of self interest.  They’re no longer insouciant; they’re worried about getting their own, keeping their own. They have a stake.

They’re now open to listening to other opinions.

This is why if one person must pay taxes, everyone should pay taxes—no exceptions.  Everyone has a stake in society.  We all live here.  We all want whats best for us and our families. We may disagree on what that means and how to achieve it but we do, in fact, all have a stake.  So pay up.

This is another tenet of classic Rule of Law: All laws should be general in application.  That is, they apply to all and not only special groups or individuals.

Another case in point, minimum wage.  Everyone’s all for it, right?  Sure, in the abstract, but what about when it’s right in your face?

Well then not so much.

The Oasis Cafe decided to put the state mandatory Minimum wage increase on the receipt so the customers would understand why things are more expensive; saying that hiding the price increase is “…backhanded”.  Some of their customers didn’t mind having it on the check. Others, however, did not like it, from the article:

“It’s Oasis [sic] way of blaming our government for trying to set a fair living wage,” one customer wrote on Facebook. “It is political grandstanding.”

Hmmm… I wonder why they don’t want people to know.  Because it’s just like with illegal immigration.   It’s no big deal until your property taxes increase and classrooms swell, then it’s crystallized into crises.

This needs to be worked whereever it can.  Demand transparency.  Real transparency.  Not one that relies on the press to disperse it. Put it as close as possible to the people, right in their face.

The Left, Democrats and Progressives claim they want transparency.  Let them prove it.  Personally, I don’t believe their claim is sincere.  Like everything else, they only champion things that benefit them.  The only code of principle begins and ends with what’s good for the movement, nothing else.  So if they must do something morally disgraceful, unethical, so be it (it’s why they had a KKK member in their ranks until just 4 years ago, had a Senator that drowned a woman, a President accused of rape and they all looked the other way).  That’s the way they roll.  They don’t want transparency in many cases because they know what they’re championing is unpopular.

The point I’m making is simple.

From here on out, when there is a new tax, new rule, new regulation, the conservatives in State Senate and House must demand real tangible transparency.  If the LibProgs want a new fee, be sure it’s on a receipt for all people to see.  And use specific terms, like “NH Gas Tax”… better yet: “NH Democrat Gas Tax”… use the bill numbers too. Make them own it.  And make that known.

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